T-SQL Tuesday #48: Head in the Cloud

12 November 2013

Author: Kathi Kellenberger

Number of views: 7826

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It's T-SQL Tuesday again! This time my colleague Jorge Segarra (@sqlchicken) is the host and the topic is Cloud Atlas.

A few years ago I was teaching SSRS for a training company in St. Louis. A gentleman in the class had worked at a local pharmaceutical company for over ten years doing the same job in exactly the same way. The man had been laid off from the company as they made cuts during the downturn in the economy. He was now taking all the SQL Server classes at the training center as part of the deal he received when he lost his job.

Despite over 10 years in IT, he struggled with the class. Every time he couldn’t get something to work, he would say “That’s Microsoft for you.” He admitted he was woefully behind on current technologies because his company would not pay for any training while he was there. I’m wondering if he just never approached his manager asking if he could take a class or buy a book. But, even if they would not pay for training that is not an excuse to ignore what is going on in the world of technology. It is important to invest in yourself and your skills in whatever way you can. There are a ton of free resources available, and it just takes some discipline on your part to learn something new every day.

So, what should you be learning about today? What is the fast approaching future? I think one of the most important topics to pay attention to today is the cloud. Using the cloud, companies can create applications that scale out on demand paying only for the resources they use. It’s probably just a matter of time before the company you work for is taking advantage of cloud services if they are not already.

So, how can you learn about the cloud? If you have an MSDN license, you can experiment with Microsoft Azure services for free. You can spin up a VM already loaded with SQL Server 2014, create an Azure SQL Database, and much more. If you don’t have an MSDN license, you can take advantage of a free trial. Outside of Microsoft Azure, there are many other cloud vendors such as Amazon.